Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 3).djvu/154

 "Ere those pages meet your eye, the hand that wrote them will be crumbled into dust. Oh! my son, offspring of an unhappy and ill-requited love, long before you peruse them, every trace, every memorial of your unfortunate mother will be obliterated from your mind, nor will all your efforts be able to recall to recollection the period in which her bitter tears bedewed your innocent cheek, in which with happy playfulness you hid your head in her distracted bosom:—but I run into complaints ere I assign the sad occasion of them—I will, if possible, be brief.

"Ere I was born, love, unhappy love, I may say, laid in some degree the foundation of my misery. My mother, the daughter of Count St. Paul, whose family is well known for its antiquity and pride in the Province of Normandy; untinctured either by the ambition or avarice of her parents, selected for herself at an early age a partner whose only portion was merit, and thus disappointed the expectations which her birth, beauty, and